


Come kiss me, sweet and twenty

by tarteaucitron



Category: Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: F/F, Gender Issues, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 23:06:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarteaucitron/pseuds/tarteaucitron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marriages are contracted, but embassies continue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come kiss me, sweet and twenty

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the characters as conceived and performed in the 2002/2012 all-male [Globe and West End production](http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000Zgl14nnhwDI/s/850/850/TWELFTH-NIGHT-5338.jpg). Characters retain female gender identity and actors' physical attributes.
> 
> Written for louiselux's birthday, 2013.

You arrive at the orchard gate as before, to duel words and halfpennies with my men, while I spy from the box tree, pregnant with desire under shift and kirtle. My eyes dwell jealously on the roses in your cheeks.

Dismiss the fool, and find me out, Cesario. I've made a space for your tender limbs among the cutting leaves. Raise your glance to my eye. Ah, you come. Your feet tread gently, as if not sure of their shoes, but you will not come to me in your countess's gown. I am pricked at the thought of him reaching under those skirts to be pricked himself.

"But I go not breeched for _him_ ," you told me Thursday last, "though he bid and wheedle, and vouchsafe sonnets to the excellence of my leg." How I trembled upon your fine white bosom, sliding hot fingers beneath your woollen stock. I wondered then that I had thought to see you in a woman's more natural employment, at the needle or keyboard, when these embassies please me more, these rings, these burning words exchanged. 

Today you come your way and almost pass me by, eyes lifted to the empty windows of my house. I am but an audience to the banked flame in your cheek, so invisible to myself that I would let you go, but that the flame catches in my own heart and frights me.

"Ho, Cesario!"

You startle, and your feathered hat is almost lost.

"My lady?"

Then creep inside the hedge with me, and here we stand. Here the air blows moist, and gentle light filters our darting glances, but you look to your mudded sleeves and your countenance grows stormy.

"I like this not, Madam. Think you to baffle your poor suitor by so unmannerly a reception out of doors?" You seize on my hand. "You hope to degrade and discourage my love?"

"No!" I cry. "Mistake not this needful discretion for some hasty discourtesy. I wish only for the closeness of confidence. Here no one may spy or call upon our meeting. Gentle Cesario –" Words serve naught but to reveal my ungoverned frenzy. "See – see where I have placed a pillow –" 

Your fingertips press points of fire into my wrist. "Madam, I would I were the Countess here that I could command all to look away. I would build a canopy on the lawn for our love, and bring my lips to your white cheek in view of the wide firmament. But you would bind our kisses in this thicket's straitness." Your lips press upon the crest of my cheek. "What is your answer?" I have none save the rise of my prick.

Belike the pretence pleases you that I am cruel and unbending, but it will not sustain. Your breath is honey upon my lips and your fingers already pluck at the catches of my stays. You hold me at a distance scarce enough that my covetous eye may sup the milk of your skin, and the rough strings of your hair knock at my temple.

I would beg a kiss, but your wit is in advance of my drift, and crowds your supple lip against mine in a compressure too sweet to be so brief.

"We are of a height, my lady, and yet my reach is further." Your wanton palm wheedles its way beneath my stomacher. "Will you not match chaste hand to unchaste breath?"

Ay, Cesario. Swift toil I make of your borrowed men's attire, and gloat to take your pretty prick in my gloved hand. Mad I must be to tell it by the fever that gnaws my liver, and mad are you also, driven out of your clever text.

"Sweeting," you call me, then "dove," and "Circe", and hotter words that dew my cheek and fall upon my ear like breath of atropine.

Kind darkness and the closeness of our thicket muffle uncareful tongues, and I draw you down to nestle on a taffety cushion amid open limbs. 

"Raven," you whisper, spying me here in the gloom, and rove gentle fingers long the wreath of my hair, while the fastenings of your doublet slip among my fingers.

There are those who say you are the very stamp and likeness of your brother, two farthings of a single die, boy and maid. The contract sealed on your well-matched brow and foot, and the church rang out a double alliance to crown our double fortunes. 

But I am not that gull, that changeable water. You it was I wed, my mad heart's livery boy, my knowing mistress, your slim hip and agile tongue. From a thousand brothers so shod, so breeched or skirted, I'd hold to you. And so – come again.

~

The curtain is drawn; the picture cannot be unshown, no, not for all the dowries in Illyria. Viola I am, yet Cesario will make embassies still, a borrowed sibling duty. _Come again tomorrow_ , you said, and your starting green eye did wake in me such a quantity of desire. And so do I come, after lying with brother-husband to lie all the sweeter with sister-wife.


End file.
